


Grass grows between the ruins

by zinjadu



Series: Wed to Blight [43]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: City Elf (Dragon Age) Origin, Dalish Elves, Dragon Age: Origins Quest - Nature of the Beast, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, just city elf things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-17 19:07:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20626052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zinjadu/pseuds/zinjadu
Summary: Saving the best for last?  Hardly.  Caitwyn Tabris tracks down the Dalish only to find a less than warm welcome.  Zevran did warn her.Note: This series is fully drafted!  Posts will be on Sunday every week until we're done.  Thank you to everyone has read, left kudos, and written comments.  <3  Keeps me going, it does.





	Grass grows between the ruins

“What have you found, my dear?” Caitwyn knelt by the rut in the rain-softened turf as Zevran waited nearby. Sten might have been a better tracker, but Zevran was quieter. 

And the people they were tracking were less likely to kill the two of them on sight.

“Think I found their trail.” Her fingers traced the rut of the fabled land-ship the Dalish used. Between the ruts were the lighter impressions of the halla. It was as if the creatures barely touched the ground, to judge by the lightness of their trace.

“You should not sound so pleased.” Zevran’s mouth, normally curved in a smirk, turned down at the corners. Caitwyn stood as she brushed her hands off. It was good to not have to wear gloves all the time, though her boots—all their boots—were perpetually soaked by the spring rains. Still, after a month and a half of lingering in an abandoned farmstead, it was good to be able to walk with the land again.

Which they had been doing for three spans to get to the forest and then find even this hint of the Dalish.

Zevran shrugged, the picture of unconcern. But Caitwyn had been around the Crow for long enough to see past his masks. They were nearly as good as her own, better than Leliana’s and any others she had encountered. He painted himself with nonchalance and an over-interest in sex, cloaked himself with smirks and quips and jibes, allowing the occasional flash of venom. His contempt for Harrowmont stood out in her mind.

But sometimes not even his eyes could lie.

Overhead the birds flitted between the trees, but did not sing.

“Not all Dalish can be like the ones who were cruel to you. One of the shopkeeps back ho—in the Alienage, he’d met them as a child. They helped him. Alarith wasn’t the sort to lie. Much.”

She’d expected a dagger-sharp grin, or something else habitually smug. Instead he regarded her with shadowed eyes. “Perhaps it is as you say, Caitwyn. We shall see.”

* * *

“You’re not one of us, no matter that you  _ look _ like us,” the guard practically spat as she walked past. Caitwyn nearly flinched as if struck. The delicate tattoos of the woman’s face were beautiful, and she carried herself with the pride of a hawk on the wing. But her lip curled at the sight of Caitwyn’s naked face, and un-Dalish line of Zevran’s own tattoo. 

The others were inspected and then waved ahead as if beneath notice, not worthy of comment.

Somehow, that made it  _ worse _ .

“That’s not—!”

“Alistair, raising a fuss will only make it worse.”

“ _ I _ see no notable difference. But then, all fleshy ones are alike to me.”

“Hrm, they are not half so well trained as they would have us believe.” 

Caitwyn glanced at Zevran while mild protests and snide comments were mounted in their defense. Not that it made any dent in the Dalish reserve. Even after his warnings, she still had held to some childish idea of the Dalish: a people proud and strong and free. Everything her kith and kin  _ weren’t _ . Zevran’s brows arched in sympathy, and he had the grace not to point out that he had told her to expect this.

It was the treatment he had received, after all.

“Come on,” she said quietly. No need to snap, no point to it. They needed the Dalish. They needed every body there was to be had to stop the Blight. “We should find this Keeper.”

She’d just never thought she’d be looked down on by people who looked like her. All her life, she’d been looked down on by humans, and yet the humans at her back and some of the humans she’d met outside of Denerim had been  _ kind _ . Had  _ learned _ . Had been able to  _ see _ .

It was more than these Dalish could do, and Caitwyn let her last childhood dream tumble into the ashes of their campfire that night.

* * *

The forest was still beautiful, in spite of the ugly secrets at its heart. 

Caitwyn sat on a pillar of the old ruin, her legs kicking in the air. They should get back to the Dalish camp. Lanaya needed to know. She’d be Keeper now. Now that Zathrian was dead. There were others of the clan that she’d like to say good-bye to as well. Not all had been dismissive, but Caitwyn knew that among some of the Dalish, she would forever be an outsider.

A reminder of what elves had lost. Of what they might yet be.

“My dear, your habit of climbing up rather high when you must think is, while perhaps understandable, rather upsetting to some of our companions.” For the first time since coming to the forest, Zevran grinned like his old self, sharp as knives and twice as quick. Caitwyn glanced down to where Alistair paced on the ground. From up here he looked tiny. And agitated, craning his neck up now and again. 

She flicked a bit of loose stone off the pillar.

“You warned me. You told me how they treated you, your own mother’s clan, and I didn’t listen.”

“Yes, on both counts, yet not all of them were unkind, my friend. Then and now. The woman with the halla, and the man who wished to know of his wife. You even won over that sour story-teller.” She shrugged. Zevran crossed the narrow lintel stone to sit next to her. The sun was still a good hour off of setting, the days longer and longer, and the world smelled of green, growing things. Life abounded in this forest.

Less so now, but more than might have otherwise been.

“And for my part, I am glad you were able to end the curse and save the clan. Perhaps they deserved it, perhaps not, but. I like to think that my mother would have approved.”

His smile softened as he gazed into the horizon, and for the first time Caitwyn saw the Zevran that was beyond even the shadows that he used to cloak himself. The Zevran that had a heart, and beat more readily, and more truly, than most people would credit. 

Than even she had. 

The assassination attempt on the roadside was miles away, and felt like it was part of a different life. For both of them.

Her hand curled around his shoulder and squeezed. 

“In that case, my friend,” she said, echoing his inflection, “I’m glad.”

His brown eyes danced in the waning afternoon sunlight. “Somehow, you are still able to surprise me, Caitwyn. I do hope you keep this up. Now come,” he said, standing. He held out a hand for her, as she had not for him on that distant roadside. “We should return to the ground and finish our tasks, yes?”

“Yeah.” Her gaze drifted down. Back down to the earth, where her responsibility waited. “Probably should.”

Caitwyn grasped his hand and rose to her feet, the wind buffeting them both up this high. And yet they stood.


End file.
